"Star Wars" will be making its way back to the big screen now that The Walt Disney Company has acquired Lucasfilm Ltd. for $4.05 billion USD.

Disney said it is buying Lucasfilm Ltd. with cash and stock, and the deal includes Lucasfilm's high-tech production companies (Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound) and the rights to the "Indiana Jones" franchise.

Even though George Lucas, the creator of "Star Wars" and founder of Lucasfilm Ltd., said he was done making new versions of his mega popular epic space opera, he's going to allow Disney to bring "Star Wars" back to life.

Disney is currently working on a new "Star Wars" trilogy, beginning with "Episode 7." The new episode is due out in 2015, and Episodes 8 and 9 will shortly follow. According to Disney, the new trilogy will follow Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Han Solo beyond "Return of the Jedi," which was the third film in the original trilogy (but is chronologically the sixth film in the franchise).

"For the past 35 years, one of my greatest pleasures has been to see 'Star Wars' passed from one generation to the next," said Lucas. "It's now time for me to pass 'Star Wars' on to a new generation of filmmakers. I've always believed that 'Star Wars' could live beyond me, and I thought it was important to set up the transition during my lifetime."

Kathleen Kennedy, the current co-chairman of Lucasfilm, will become the president of the unit. She will also be executive producer for the new trilogy.

Kennedy has been working with Lucas and a team of writers to discuss the storyline for "Episode 7." Kennedy said it's essential to have Lucas present as a key advisor during the making of the next trilogy, and she even referred to him as "her Yoda." Lucas has provided his story lines for the new trilogy.

"I always said I wasn't going to do any more and that's true, because I'm not going to do any more, but that doesn't mean I'm unwilling to turn it over to Kathy to do more," said Lucas.

Lucas has received quite a bit of criticism in the recent past due to his decisions involving "Star Wars." Despite creating the hugely popular original trilogy in the 1970s and 80s, he quickly became the bad guy when the second trilogy was released. Many fans disliked the new story line, which took place prior to the original trilogy. Fans also hated new characters, such as Jar Jar Binks.

To make matters worse, Lucas changed some key details in the original trilogy (such as the scene where Greedo takes the first shot at Han Solo in a bar) and released 3D versions of the movies earlier this year, marking Lucas as a "sell out."

I think Disney did as good of a job as they could do remaking Tron (after all, it's hard to make a "bad" film when you spend 250+ million...unless you're Michael Bay)

But in all fairness, Episode III was pretty good. All three new episodes were ok but obviously we're talking about a different time and a different audience. It is impossible to keep the original audience happy while also catering to a new audience. Look at the original Star Wars, for example. If it were never release, and released today as new material, everyone would laugh.

As is with all sci-fi, there's always some balding overweight critic that can't use it to successfully escape his awful reality and has to throw jabs at it.

Episode 3 was not good. It was barely better than 1, and I shudder to think how anything could be worse than 2. Go watch the Red Letter Media review on the prequel trilogy. I myself did not know how incredibad those movies were before it was explained to me--I just knew they didn't sit well.

For the record, the actors don't have to be the same ones from 4-6 for the sequels to be good. What is required is that the movies stick to a basic, understandable, emotionally compelling formula--identical to the original trilogy. The lightsaber fights are a key example of this. In the original trilogy, the fights were about emotions and character interaction. In the prequels, it was just a martial-arts exhibition.

I there is only one battle scene in the entire movie, that's probably a good thing. We need to get attached to the characters. Lucas has completely forgotten that.

I thought the prequels were decent if you can forgive mitochlorians and jar jar. What is total trash is the Clone wars animated series it lowers the bar for the next generation of star wars fans. Either way can disney screw up the Star Wars franchise and worse than Lucas himself? his latest work on the series makes you wonder if it truly was him that came up with Star Wars...clueless.

For me, Star Wars ended after The Empire Strikes Back. All rubbish after that. Still don't understand that it attracts people after all the damage Lucas did to it after TESB. When I was a kid, I seem to remember Lucas saying that there were going to be 9 films, with 3 more to follow the middle episodes...anyone else remember that?

The criticism of episodes I-III is partly politically motivated. These films dramatize and sensationalize a transition to outright tyranny that is occurring in almost the same way in the real world. Most of these critics simply cannot comprehend the intricacies of the plot, because doing so threatens their paradigm. It invokes cognitive dissonance. They just cannot get into the story because doing so might cause an epiphany or two; it might cause them to question their own mealticket. And moreover, they cannot grasp the weight of the plot, or its historical significance, because they are trained to be blind to the concepts presented. Trained by self interest. Like most of the dumbed down masses they dont want anything to do with any Greater Truth, and will invoke cognitive dissonance when any subject or story gets to close to the truth. So they of course arent going to respect the story. The story is something that is playing out in the real world right now, for those not too frickin ignorant or blind to be able to see it. I'm not too terribly impressed by the acting, but then again the acting in any star wars film was never great.

Why not just come out and say what you mean. I'm guessing but here goes:

The UN is the Galactic Empire?The US is the Galactic Republic (maybe the Western World)?The UN is plotting to destroy the US (Western World) first by political takeover, then by force later?Once that happens, the UN will hunt down and kill all of the Jedi? :)

I dont think you give people enough credit. Most people understand the story and where it draws it's inpirations from. It's the endless CGI filler crap, horrible acting, the gigantic holes GL punched into the SW mythos, that ultimately made the movies just bad.